Most of us perceive ourselves as slightly smarter, funnier, more talented, and better-looking than average.

So most people are basically all running around thinking they are better than the other? That's funny. Me, I belong in the group prone to depression, I guess, or rather I think I'm pretty darn average to below average.

Keenan is also using transcranial magnetic stimulation to disrupt deliberate self-deprecation -- the type of unctuous, ingratiating behavior that seems humble but is actually arrogance in disguise. Patterns of brain activation during self-deprecation are fundamentally the same as those during self-deceptive pride, Keenan is finding. Both are forms of one-upmanship. "They're in the same location and seem to serve the same purpose: putting oneself ahead in society," he says.

When one considers all the evidence, depression seems less like a disorder where the brain is operating in a haphazard way, or malfunctioning. Instead, depression seems more like the vertebrate eye—an intricate, highly organized piece of machinery that performs a specific function.

i guess all i mean is when my dad was really depressed if someone had told me his depression was "an intricate, highly organized piece of machinery that performs a specific function" i would have probably assaulted them.

Going on a pathetic archive.org binge, looking up friends webpages from high school, and somehow ended up at a photoagallery from a few weeks ago of a friend who just got married, one of my very best friends from back in the day. He looks so happy with his bf (I guess his husband now), I have so few real friends anymore. Anyway, sad lonely guy just thinking about things on the internet, but god, FUCK 2009 so far

Going on a pathetic archive.org binge, looking up friends webpages from high school, and somehow ended up at a photoagallery from a few weeks ago of a friend who just got married, one of my very best friends from back in the day. He looks so happy with his bf (I guess his husband now), I have so few real friends anymore. Anyway, sad lonely guy just thinking about things on the internet, but god, FUCK 2009 so far

I never think in quantity when it comes to friends, really? Then again that's probably cause I have very few friends. I simply don't need a ton of friends.

Discussions of depression almost always get muddled up by confusing clinical depression, which is a mental health problem, with just being unhappy, which is as common as spit.

The usual cure for unhappiness is to understand the cause of it and to decide you can change it. Since understanding the causes of your unhappiness and correctly identifying what to do to change it are both processes that are prone to error, ignorance and self-delusion, it can take quite a few iterations of this to tip the balance in your favor.

Clinically depressed people, otoh, are incapable of acting to change their situation. They need help.

Clinically depressed people, otoh, are incapable of acting to change their situation. They need help. - yes, the problem is that it is that the line b/c CD & the more situational variety is often so subtle, or the transition so smooth, that it is very difficult to distinguish one from the other, at least not until the CD reaches such ridiculous extremes that it reveals itself for what it is. It is a slippery slope, this depression stuff. Best just to consult a professional from the outset & let them help you sort out what needs to be done.

This - incapable of acting to change their situation is the crux of the matter.

The sense of hopelessness leads to a sense of helplessness. That learned helplessness, like animals in labs.

That even when you have identified the cause - or at least the principle aggravator - of your depression, you still feel utterly helpless and unable to do anything about it. The feeling of "it does not matter if I move or I don't move, I will be administered an electric shock either way." Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Yeah, I just came out of a major CD funk last year & you really do feel helpless & trapped inside an existential catch-22. I hate to think where it would have led to if not for the guidance of those close to me. I came out of it (thank god), but I wish I'd been more hip to what was going on earlier b/c I simply would like all that time back! I'm so scared of heading down that path again that, these days, if I wake up with a normal case of the blues I contemplate calling my doctor.

Hell of a lot of times it's been peeps like my awesome husband who basically pack me in a suitcase and drop me off at the therapist when I'm far gone in the depressio camp as I'm obviously too one with my bed & blankets to be functional. OTOH the idea that I'm "incapable of acting to change [my] situation" is one I know is DAMN dangerous. "Change" meaning maybe being able to take a shower, put on real clothes, things I know will put me in a slightly more functional frame.

On the OTHER other hand there's sometimes the idea that there IS a way to change the situation by a gun to the head. Fuck that. What I'm saying is I realize w/me there's a lot of ideas that are bad that try to settle like birds on my head and I have to shake them before they lay eggs.I heard this metaphor when I was 16 and it has resulted in this habit of literally shaking my head like a wet dog to connote kicking the damn thing out. Just what I need, another weird tic, right? But it works for me on some level I guess.

If you are capable of finding the will to get up, take a shower and put on real clothes, all by yourself, then you haven't yet reached the last stage of incapacity, thankfully. But if that is consistently about all you can accomplish before you exhaust your ability to act, then I'd say you should still be considered clinically depressed - which isn't shameful, just important to know and for others around you to recognize, so you can get to the therapist and get more help.

It's not like I am saying you or other depressed people are, by definition, incapable and therefore beyond change, but more of a functional definition, based on current observable behavior, requiring outside intervention and assistance.

Some of this lady's stuff has helped me – DEFS not saying it's a global solution or that it will work for everyone. She has this thing where you set up sort of a living will-type document to tell others (and yourself) how you want to be treated when yr too far gone.

Ugh, sorry for my stupid revive last night. I understand the distinction between being really bummed out over certain events or circumstances, and the more persistent CD. I wasn't trying to pretend like I'm really depressed, I just wanted to vent and drunkenly went for this one to revive. My post looks pretty stupid sitting up against the legitimate problems that a lot of people were/are discussing in this thread. That said, thanks stevienixed.

Birds laying eggs in an interesting metaphor, Abbot. I always had the metaphor of "thoughtworms" from that Weather Prophets song. "I've got a worm in my brain, it brings me to my knees, it comes on like a thought, and stays just like a disease."

You think it's a thought, so you think it, but it doesn't go anywhere, it just goes round and round in circles and eats your brain, eats your actual thoughts, sucks the life and soul and happiness and joy right out of your head. It's kind of like a computer virus, but for a sentient brain.

The thoughtworms have been getting cleverer lately - they come on like thoughts about things I genuinely believe, they hide themselves inside philosophy and ideals. But they're still thoughtworms. It's taken some readjustment recently to try and understand that a lot of the things I have been thinking about Feminism are, actually, thoughtworms piggybacking on genuine beliefs to get into my head and destroy shit.

The thing that really gets to me, is how isolated I am. That my family live SO FAR away from me. I realised yesterday that I hadn't talked to my mum in two weeks, and that was part of why I was getting so far down. The thought that there was no one on "my side" at all. Living alone is bad for shit like that.

I used to have the "where does it come from" thread bookmarked for cases of emergency, but that's kind of been ruined now. :-(

my dad's mom was mentally ill - probably now she'd be considered bipolar, but this was the 60s - and after both my dad and his sister were off at college, she really lost it, and my grandfather just couldn't deal with it anymore and sent her to a mental institution and divorced her. I think that's probably my greatest fear - that something like that will happen to me, even though my problems aren't nearly as severe as hers.

If you say that you are having thoughts about killing yourself, they can keep you as long as they like - I mean, until they can prove that you are no longer a danger to yourself.

It;s like this catch 22. I think about suicide all the time. This is normal for me, but usually it's only once or twice a day. When it becomes *constant* when it becomes thinking through methods (even if only to discount the ones I could never ever do because it would be too painful) - i *know* that that is the point at which I *know* I should get some help.

But if I tell anyone in the mental health profession that I'm having serious thoughts of suicide, they are obliged to report that and get me sectioned. Fuck that shit, I'm not going back there. Mental hospitals *make* you crazier than you ever went in.

xp - I don't know whether it was involuntary or not ... my parents and my dad's sister were all outside of the country when it happened. I don't know whether she died there (she died shortly before I was born), or whether she was only there for a little while.

Anyway, because of that, it's really important to me to have close friends outside of family/romantic relationships, so that I don't feel alone or dependent on ties to only a few people. My grandmother was the typical post-war housewife, and outside of her family, she had nothing - no real relationships with others, no means of supporting herself, etc.

I'm not asking rhetorically or cynically (though I am probably suspicious due to experiences) but genuinely want to know - I don't know. In the hopes it might be helpful?

I suppose I could just call my doctor and go and say "I'm depressed as fuck - this is a bad one" but what's he gonna do but fuck with my medication, and I don't have the sick time left if it goes wrong. I read that page Abbott recommended, and I suppose I need to follow some of the suggestions there - things I know do work, but I forget when I'm in the thick of it.

-get some more light, leave the house/basement office, stand in the sunshine even if I hate it

-do some light exercise, even if it's just getting on the machine for five minutes, it's better than nothing

I'll do that for a week, and if it hasn't started to lift, I'll go to the doctor.